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Carnivore and Bile Acid Malabsorption
Dr Smith isn't the only one practitioner saying you need to eat only plants to detox. Andrew Kaufman, whom you probably would hate, is in the toxicology / terrain theory / no viruses crowd and also says you need to drop meat during his turpentine-based detox. Neither Smith or Kaufman are vegetarians or against red meat. I am sure this advice to focus on plants during detox is very common among other practitioners who emphasize detox. It would be nice to find some of the original sources for this type of advice to eat plants to detox. Is this based on published studies?
I do want to do some internet reading to see if anyone is talking about a carnivore-based detox.
I agree with some of the negatives of Dr Smith's approach that you mention. My take is that you take health influencers for who they are and no one practitioner or influencer can prove his or her approach or advice is correct all the time. No worries if you don't want to watch Dr Smith's new video.
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on April 8, 2022, 7:07 pmAlso, do you have any idea what the relevant part of that book is that you linked to? It's really long and the scanned text is not searchable...
The anecdote Dr Smith read out starts as the bottom paragraph on page xi and continues on page xii. The point is that the patient didn't detox sufficiently after a year on carnivore and his symptoms came back after adding back in fruit. According to Dr Smith, you aren't completely healed if you cannot eat fruit.
That is classic Smith... Find a tiny snippet from a voluminous text that seems to prove the exact OPPOSITE of what Smith is trying to prove himself, and then boldly claim that it in fact proves his own hypothesis, against all logic. You know damn well Smith didn't read that whole book either, and he probably didn't even read the main chapters.
Addressing the text:
(1) We don't know what this person's ailment was, aside from being "serious" and "grave".
(2) We don't know what his diet was aside from including fruits and nuts to some extent.
(3) We don't know what kind of life this person lived, what environmental exposures they had.
(4) It sounds like this person had an autoimmune reaction to plant compounds of some kind. Autoimmune conditions can last a long time because the immune system has a long-lasting memory. That's how we maintain immunity against viruses for years after being exposed to them! (Of course, you have to be sane enough to understand that viruses actually exist to make that connection in the first place...)
Let's take a survey of how many people react to red meat and how many people react to plants. Oh, wait, virtually all food allergies are in response to plant proteins you say? Hmmm, seems like there's something going on with plants...maybe it has to do with the fact that they almost universally harbor defense compounds because they don't want to be eaten?
Smith is an idiot. I'd like to see him tell Mikhaila Peterson to her face that she's just avoiding detox by eating a carnivore diet. Can you imagine...Smith, the balding late-middle-age ex-CrossFit conspiracy pseudoscientist, telling the attractive and healthy mother-of-two, daughter of the great Jordan Peterson, who fought like hell for a life worth living AND cured her father of his insane illnesses with the SAME DAMN DIET, that she got it all wrong. Riiiight...
It's illogical for practitioners to recommend red meat as essential and to simultaneously demonize animal fat when those two things ALWAYS come together on an animal. Look at every hunter-gatherer in existence...they all aim for the fatter animals whenever possible and are known to discard animals that are too lean.
In the case of Vitamin A toxicity, consider this as well: Vitamin A is fat soluble and tends to get stored in fatty tissue when the liver is overwhelmed. In order to get it back out of those fat cells, I can almost guarantee your body has to be in a state of using fat for energy. I'm pretty sure RBP is not playing a role at that point. And if you have to be using fat to get it out of storage, then eating a low-fat diet and using carbs for energy is going to prevent Vitamin A from getting out of those fat cells. So, when Garrett Smith says, STAY OUT OF KETOSIS!!!, that is fine advice if you're trying to avoid pain from detox, but that is precisely how you're NOT going to detox Vitamin A, and why Smith has it completely backwards.
His high-fiber low-fat approach is draining people of what little cholesterol they have, which is reducing their hormone production and reducing bile acid production. Then telling them to take Lactoferrin is probably further reducing their bile acid pool by causing them not to reabsorb whatever bile acids they do have. Then they can't absorb fat and get closer and closer to entering a state of cholestasis, again, entirely backwards from what Smith is claiming.
I watched the livestream too. It drives me absolutely crazy listening to him as well.
The relevant part is on page XI.
Few things he mentions EVER TIME when talking about the carnivore diet:
- High fat causes cholestasis. (Why? Where is the evidence?)
- If there is no fiber, all the toxins the bile releases are reabsorbed and you basically get nowhere. (Who said that??)
- Bile is nothing but the liver's poop, is absolutely toxic to everything it touches and you want to get rid of as much as possible. (Why would the body reabsorb any of it, if it was that toxic in the first place)
Thanks for the answers in your previous post.
HRT: I see your point. The thing is that they are afraid that If I wait I'll loose valuable time in terms of bone building years. (I'm 25) If the detox takes me let's say, 3 years, it may be too late to recover from the osteoporosis. IF we believe it is due to a lack of oestrogen only.
Weight gain: Could very well be that the body hold on to weight for better detox.
Fat vs. Protein: Ok. So if your were perfectly healthy you would probably eat like 70:30 Fat:Protein? Which is said to be evolutionarily consistent. (Mike ben D'or and the protein limit)
Stool update: After removing Magnesium and Potassium supplements I have PERFECT stool (Stool chart 4 with a dark brown colour). Interesting. I'm taking absolutely nothing other than a little salt and am eating lean meats. (Heart, Skirt steaks which are very lean, Striploins without the fat cap...)
Here is the original page with the PDF of Elma Stuart's book, which also includes a PDF of Salisbury's book as well as Stuart's' correspondence with English novelist George Elliot.
https://zerocarbzen.com/2015/05/18/what-must-i-do-to-get-well-by-elma-stuart/
If anyone wants a physical copy of Elma Stuart's 19th century book on the carnivore diet, there are 37 different versions on Abebooks, as the book is no longer in copyright. There are two versions of the most complete 1898 edition, both printed in India.
Here is a softcover version.
Here is a leather-bound version. I guess leather fits the carnivore diet!
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on April 8, 2022, 9:53 pmIn the case of Vitamin A toxicity, consider this as well: Vitamin A is fat soluble and tends to get stored in fatty tissue when the liver is overwhelmed. In order to get it back out of those fat cells, I can almost guarantee your body has to be in a state of using fat for energy. I'm pretty sure RBP is not playing a role at that point. And if you have to be using fat to get it out of storage, then eating a low-fat diet and using carbs for energy is going to prevent Vitamin A from getting out of those fat cells. So, when Garrett Smith says, STAY OUT OF KETOSIS!!!, that is fine advice if you're trying to avoid pain from detox, but that is precisely how you're NOT going to detox Vitamin A, and why Smith has it completely backwards.
His high-fiber low-fat approach is draining people of what little cholesterol they have, which is reducing their hormone production and reducing bile acid production. Then telling them to take Lactoferrin is probably further reducing their bile acid pool by causing them not to reabsorb whatever bile acids they do have. Then they can't absorb fat and get closer and closer to entering a state of cholestasis, again, entirely backwards from what Smith is claiming.
This is all very interesting. It is good to get different perspectives than Dr Smith's. Thanks for posting yours.
@nina, yes 95% of bile gets reabsorbed IF there is no soluble fibre in the digestive track to carry it out of the body. So, maybe this is a case for ingestion of soluble fiber? Karen Hurd, an American nutritionist cured her severely pesticides poisoned daughter with bean slurry. Beans, or rather the soluble fiber in beans binds with the bile and whatever toxins are there for excretion.
Now, I am not saying that it is not possible to live and even thrive on meat only and the northerners did it very nicely eating whales and caribo, and I doubt they were having gallbladder issues.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Have you had good experience with soluble fiber?
I still can't wrap my head around why there are soo many people (including me) that have such bad reactions to fiber. If it was so vital that wouldn't happen. I get TERRIBLE gas every time I ingest it. I actually like certain veggies but the discomfort is just not worth it.
I don't know that story, so I can't give any opinion. Was is due to the fiber though or just because she stopped eating the poison and changed her diet.